


Fire, Too Late

by LupineCrown (Wolf_of_Lilacs)



Category: Warriors - Erin Hunter
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Missing Scene, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:47:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22501978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolf_of_Lilacs/pseuds/LupineCrown
Summary: Spottedleaf watches Tigerclaw, to an end she regrets. Takes place duringInto the Wild.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 35





	Fire, Too Late

**Author's Note:**

> I headcanon that Rosetail and Thrushpelt are Spottedleaf, Redtail, and Willowpelt's parents. _Spottedleaf's Heart_ is disregarded.

There’s something wrong.

Spottedleaf examines Redtail’s body as the Clan begins to disperse, stretching out his limbs with gentle paws, nosing the teeth marks at his throat. It all seems to corroborate Tigerclaw’s report, and there’s no reason that it shouldn’t. And yet…

And yet she can’t shake a lingering…something. He’s her brother; she’s just in shock; there’s nothing unusual here. Warriors die in battle, as much as she wishes it wasn’t necessary.

She looks up just in time to see Tigerclaw watching her. As soon as she meets his eye, his expression crumples into one of deepest grief. He dips his head to her. “I’m sorry for your loss. I wish I’d gotten to him sooner, but there were so many cats.”

“I understand,” Spottedleaf meows, burying her nose into Redtail’s cold fur and breathing in the remnants of his scent. She feels Willowpelt beside her, and the two of them huddle there. Rosetail joins them, silent.

Redtail is buried. Spottedleaf puts all her confusion out of her mind. The new apprentice has captured the Clan’s attention. It’s not a hard thing to do.

Or it wouldn’t have been, except for two things.

Ravenpaw is more skittish than ever. Spottedleaf sees him eating alone, or not eating at all, his narrow shoulders hiked up, his head slung low. Whenever Tigerclaw speaks to him, he stiffens. He’s terrified, and he is anything but subtle.

And then there is Tigerclaw himself. “Is there something wrong with my apprentice?” he asks her the day after Redtail’s death and Firepaw’s arrival.

“What do you mean?” Spottedleaf has been attempting to sort herbs, but keeps letting herself get distracted. Everything reminds her of Redtail, and she wishes desperately that she could have a few days to herself to grieve. She doesn’t have an apprentice, though. Maybe one of Frostfur’s kits will be up for it.

“He’s weak. Afraid of his own shadow. Can you give him anything to calm him?”

She bristles. “Like what? Anything I can give him would just tire him. And I do not give cats poppy seeds so they can stay on them long-term, Tigerclaw.”

He’s expressionless. “That’s too bad.”

“Maybe ease up on his training some,” she suggests lightly.

“He’s already behind. He was a travesty in that battle with RiverClan, as I have made certain to assure him.”

Dear StarClan. How had he ever been considered worthy of an apprentice? “Well, there’s your problem. Be more patient with him.”

“Hmm.” Tigerclaw turns away, his tail high. She watches him go, oddly relieved.

She doesn’t tell Bluestar. She knows she should, but something ties her tongue that she can’t seem to shake.

It feels a lot like fear.

*

“Spottedleaf! Spottedleaf!” Graypaw bounces about her clearing.

“What is it?” She peers out at him. Firepaw skulks beside him, favoring a paw.

She emerges at the sight of him. Sign or no sign, she had no idea what to expect from a kittypet, and yet here he was, as sheepish as a Clanborn cat would be. “I got tengled in a thorn bush,” he admits.

“Let’s have a look.” He holds up the paw. The thorn is rather impressive, wickedly curved. She nips it out without a thought and begins making a horsetail poultice. “Hunting practice?”

“Yeah.” Oh dear, he’s not meeting her eyes. Graypaw, meanwhile, is batting at a fern frond that must have torn at some point. He’s quite absorbed.

“Happens to the best warriors, you know,” she meows. She shoos them both to the main clearing as politely as she can, then goes back to her brooding.

She remembers Redtail’s claws, and how the only fur caught between them had been the right color to be Oakheart’s, but there hadn’t been enough of it. Enough for a scuffle, perhaps, but not for a fight to the death.

She thinks of Tigerclaw’s odd question about Ravenpaw.

She shivers.

Tigerclaw moves about camp as casually as can be. He gives Firepaw snide looks. He terrorizes Ravenpaw. He huddles with Darkstripe and Longtail the way he always has. Perfectly normal. Too normal, Spottedleaf thinks.

“StarClan being coy?” Rosetail plops beside Spottedleaf as she finishes a mouse.

“Not really. Why?” Spottedleaf offers the last bite of the mouse, but Rosetail shakes her head, instead stretching out on her side and cleaning her claws with quick scrapes of her teeth. Her tail, caught in the evening sun, catches the light almost as brilliantly as Firepaw’s pelt.

(She could have been Fire, perhaps. Maybe Fire wasn’t just one cat, but several. But that thought is brief, and Spottedleaf lets it go.)

“What’s eating you, then? Not that mouse.”

Spottedleaf wants to be a kit again, for a terrible moment. Batting moss balls around the clearing with Redtail and Willowpelt while Rosetail and Swiftbreeze—who had nursed them—look on.

Spottedleaf shakes her head and sighs. “Does Tigerclaw seem like himself?”

Rosetail rolls her eyes. “If ‘like himself’, you mean an absolute furball, then of course. He’s worse than my brother ever was, StarClan save us.”

That’s not reassuring at all.

Spottedleaf continues to watch him. Her watching doesn’t go unnoticed. He glowers back at her sometimes, lips drawn back. Then Darkstripe will get his attention or Lionheart will invite him to share tongues, and his expression becomes perfectly bland. And it’s this, more than anything, that makes her certain he’s lying about…something.

So, she decides, it’s time to confront him.

“I know you’ve got something that got your tail in a twist. Very…suspicious sort of twist, like those cats who don’t just steal prey from other Clans but also eat the prey on their territory. You know what I mean?” Spottedleaf flops next to Tigerclaw as he’s scraping his claws with his teeth. The sound is horrendous.

He spits out a bit of stray fur and blinks in confusion. “My tail’s perfectly straight.” He even goes so far as to eye it suspiciously, then to turn that look on her. “What do you want? You’re chirping like a starling.”

“I think something happened at that battle that you haven’t told anyone,” she replies, smoothing her chest fur with her tongue so she can study him without seeming to stare.

“Like what?” The fur along his spine prickles, and if she hadn’t been watching so closely, she would have missed it.

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

“I would, gladly. If there were anything to tell.” He rolls his eyes, his meow casual but with the faintest hint of a growl. (This could mean anything. His meow is lower than most. It may not have been a growl at all.)

“Right. Of course you would. There isn’t a more loyal ThunderClan warrior than you.”

“Tell that to Bluestar.” His tail droops.

She knows then, knows that her brother’s death was not bad luck, knows that the cat in front of her had arranged it somehow. She wishes she didn’t know, wants to cry out like a kit in the throes of a nightmare. She tries to keep still, to keep her expression bland, but she must have slipped. Or maybe it’s merely coincidental that Tigerclaw’s eyes narrow for the briefest moment. Maybe it’s just coincidental that his lips draw back in the briefest of snarls.

Maybe…

*

ShadowClan attacks them when Bluestar takes the apprentices and Tigerclaw to Highstones. Spottedleaf can only watch in horror as Rosetail defends the nursery and dies for her trouble.

She was never as close to them as some mothers were to their kits, but so soon after Redtail…

It’s possibly because of this new grief that Spottedleaf stops watching Tigerclaw as closely. She notices his triumph when he’s named deputy. She’s tired. She’ll tell Bluestar her suspicions soon, after the burials, after Bluestar’s recovered from losing that life.

But what if they are nothing more than suspicions? StarClan is silent, as silent as they have been for moons, except for the fire sign.

Spottedleaf is returning from the dirtplace, finally ready to tell Bluestar what she suspects about Tigerclaw. She can hear Frostfur’s kits mewling to each other. She doesn’t hear the cat behind her until he’s leapt on her back.

He reeks of ShadowClan. She doesn’t recognize him.

“Sorry about this, darlin’,” he drawls, his paw at the back of her neck. “Just doing what I have to.” She wriggles around in his grip, enough to claw him, but he’s too quick and has surprise in his favor. Hit teeth are at her throat. She never even has a chance to yowl.

Fire may save the Clan, is her last thought. It wasn’t in time to save her.


End file.
